Our Blog

Google Panda in Plain English (Infographic)

In February of 2011, the Google Panda algorithm changed the SEO world forever. After a year of ripping through what Google deems as “spammy” sites, how has Panda affected you? There has been non-stop chatter between Internet marketers and SEOs about how to protect your site from Panda, but with all of the updates and revisions to this algorithm change, things can get confusing quickly. So here it is; Google Panda in Plain English.

I’ve been doing SEO for 6 months now and I’ve come up to the following concusion: Google chnages his algo all the time. Trying to trck it is useless. Even if it works now, they’ll figure out and stop that down the road.

Best practice: just create awesome content. It’ll always work because in that case what you want and what google want just boils down to one simple thing: amazing content.

Hi kenneth, I agree 100%. I have been designing websites since 1995. Back then I took a course on ZDNet that taught HTML creation with SEO built in. It has always been about original content, back links and proper use of the META tags. ZDNet taught people how to get their site indexed by Yahoo automatically within 6 months just by using the META tags correctly. The 2 most important META tags are keywords and description. What Google has done is added logic to the equation – original interesting content + quality back links + relevant keywords + description = top ranking.

We have 2 websites we use to promote our monthly “Breakfast With Fran Tarkenton” networking event for small business owners in Toronto, Canada. The sites are dynamically powered by a database which I update with the latest breakfast information when it becomes available. Since there are literally thousands of websites promoting Breakfast With Fran each month, it is difficult for us to have original content. But I have been able to pull it off and each month our sites dominate the top 10 and top 20 results depending on the keywords used and whether the search is restricted to Canada or not.

It was not always like this. Although the site has been has been around for about 6 years, the database was added 3 years ago. Immediately, there was a noticeable difference in search engine ranking but it was still a hit or miss result. Google FriendConnect was added and the ranking temporarily improved. Then last year I decided to add unique keywords to the database which update the homepage as well as the newly created guest speaker details page. Since then the sites dominate the top 20 search results.

Finally, we started video taping our local guest speaker presentation in September and placing the video on the guest speaker details pages as an experiment. The site with the videos out ranks the site with no video content.

[…] are so many myths out there about Panda and what it means. This infographic from Single Grain makes it very easy for you to understand what Panda is, what can hurt your site, link building tips […]

Very nice illustration, i\m one of those that had a roller coaster ride when they started with the Panda updates, so far I have already did a lot of those mentioned in the infographic but getting out from something like this will take a lot of time (months and hopefully not years)

[…] an employed, full-time New Media Specialist I spend a lot of my time researching Internet and Marketing trends. As technology advances, it’s my responsibility to not only keep up with everything as it […]

I knew there was an update, but I didn’t realize just how much this update would affect my websites. Thanks so much for defining the changes. Loved the breakdown of Do’s and Don’ts. Google Panda isn’t so intiidating now! Thanks a whole lot!

[…] a rough couple of months for webmasters and SEOs alike. In addition to being pummeled by various Panda and Penguin updates and refreshes, Google has been investing significant resources into stepping […]

[…] more traffic in just two months? Perhaps you breathed life into a site that took a plunge after the Panda update. In these cases you are talking about what you accomplished, and not yourself. In other words, you […]